THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORALITY
Morality is a restraint which the community imposes on each of its
members. It demands from the individual the sacrifice of his transitory
and momentary comfort in favour of his general welfare which is
dependent on that of the community. It prohibits the pleasure of
gratifying his desires in order that by this unpleasant renunciation his
lasting well-being may be ensured. Subjectively experienced and viewed,
therefore, Morality always implies the limitation of free will, the
curbing of desire, opposition to inclinations and appetites, and the
diminution or suppression of free, or let us rather say of unbridled,
action. Before Morality can profit the community, it disturbs and
incommodes the individual, it rouses in him disagreeable sensations
which may reach such a pitch as to be intense pain. It is only after
deep reflection, of which not everyone is capable, that the individual
realizes that Morality is an essential condition of the life of society,
and that the preservation of society is an essential condition of his
own life; before he investigates, before he even meditates on Morality,
the individual feels it directly to be unpleasant, laborious,
stern--nay, hostile.
The control which Morality exercises over the actions, and indeed in
many cases over the most secret thoughts of the individual, appears at
the first glance to be somewhat paradoxical. It is by no means obvious
why the individual should always take sides against himself and,
adopting a defensive and disapproving attitude, hold his instinctive
tendencies in check. Moral conduct would be intelligible if the
community were always ready with means of coercion and could constrain
the individual by brute force to place its interest before his own
pleasure. But the individual does not wait for police intervention on
the part of the community. He frowns upon himself with the awful
severity of the law. He threatens himself with a cudgel. He divides
himself into two beings, one of which wants to follow its instincts,
while the other curbs them vigorously; one is a rearing, often a
refractory, horse, the other a rider with bridle, whip and spur.
This reduplication of the ego, one-half of which establishes control
over the other, one-half of which tries to remain true to itself, while
the other divests itself of its identity and denies itself--this is the
inner process, the outward manifestation of which is moral conduct. This
demands investigation and explanation. We must show how the organism
could develop from within itself the power to paralyse, or completely
repress, its own elemental activities, and how Morality was able to
become an integral part in the general scheme of life processes.
The mechanism whereby the mind, appraising, foreseeing and judging,
checks the first movement of impulse, is inhibition or repression.
Without inhibition moral conduct would not be possible. The mind would
have no method of indicating the path and prescribing rules to the
organism's instinct. It would have no means of making its insight
prevail over the desires of the senses. It would have no weapon with
which to force its being to actions opposed to its organic inclinations.
Without inhibition the individual would never give precedence to the
demands of the community and lay himself open to disagreeable emotions
in order to please the community. Inhibition was the necessary organic
preliminary to the phenomenon of Morality. It had to be pre-existent in
the individual, so that Morality could make itself at home in his
intellectual life, so that it could acquire creative, ruling and
practical power among the elect, and become an unconscious and easy
habit among the average. Morality took possession of a pre-existent
organic aptitude and made it serve its own purposes. But organic
aptitudes are not alike in all individuals. In some cases they are more
or less perfect; in others they may be lacking altogether. Indeed only
individuals with highly developed powers of inhibition are capable of
that heroic Morality which liberates them from the weakness of the flesh
and makes them independent of the demands of the body; those in whom
this power of inhibition is scantily developed evade the influence of
Morality entirely, and it has no authority over them.
That which is called character is at bottom the name we give to the
power of inhibition. Where it is weak we speak of lack of character,
whereas by strength of character we mean that the power of inhibition is
great. The will makes use of inhibition. With its help the will guides
the living machine in a certain direction and urges it to perform given
tasks. At the first glance it may not seem obvious that positive actions
can come of repression, which is something negative. But if we analyse
psychologically the actions demanded and promoted by the will, and trace
them back to their organic origins, we shall find that, as a rule, the
first elements consist in the prevention of impulsive movements, and
that the impetus to positive effort is given by the will, which converts
these movements into contrary ones. A few instances may make this
psychic process clearer. Winkelried, at Sempach, cleaves a path through
the cuirassiers while they bury their lances in his breast; he becomes
capable of this great deed of self-sacrifice in that, by a mighty effort
of will power, he suppresses the strongest of all instincts, that of
self-preservation, and forces all his energies, which are naturally
directed towards flight from danger, to challenge danger and yield
completely to it. The lover who overcomes his passion and renounces its
object, because his idol is the bride of his best friend, begins with
the determined inhibition of the impulse which urges him towards the
woman, and attains renunciation by the suppression of his desire; this
renunciation finds expression in positive actions, in the rupture of
relations which bring him happiness, the avoidance of meetings which
would prevent the wound in his heart from healing, and so on. The brave
rescuer who plunges into the waves to save a drowning man, or enters a
burning house to save a fellow creature threatened by the flames, must
first overcome his natural shrinking fear of the water and the fire; and
not till after the suppression of strong impulses to avoid the uncanny
adventure, does he succeed in making his muscles obey the impulse to
save life.
Inhibition, therefore, is the organic foundation on which Morality
builds, not only that Morality which consists in abstention from certain
actions, but that which is manifested in active virtue. But inhibition
is a faculty which the organism has developed for its own ends, the
better and more easily to preserve its own life, and to render its power
of achievement greater. Morality makes use of this faculty, which it
finds ready to hand, for the ends of the community, and very often
against the immediate interests of the individual for whose advantage it
is nevertheless intended. Now the individual would not put up with this
inexpedient use, one is tempted to say this clever misuse, of one of its
organic capacities, if this yielding up of the mechanism of inhibition
to Morality were not beneficial to life and therefore came within the
sphere of the biological purpose of inhibition. By being grafted on a
pre-existent organic faculty Morality becomes such itself; it forms a
link in the chain of biological processes within the individual
organism; it ceases to be purely a product of society forced upon the
individual to his molestation and in spite of his annoyance; it acquires
the character of a differentiation of inhibition in order to help the
individual, or even to make it at all possible for him to adapt himself
to life in a society.
That under the present conditions obtaining on our planet the human
individual can only live in society demands no proof. And as he can only
live in society if he submits to its rules of good and bad, Morality,
which urges him to this submission, aids and even preserves his life. We
shall now show that inhibition, of which Morality is a differentiation
making it easier for the individual to adapt himself to the conditions
of social life, is of the greatest value to the individual from the
biological point of view.
The lowest forms of life it is possible for us to observe show nothing
which can be interpreted as inhibition. All external influences to which
they are not indifferent invariably produce the same effects. They
respond to every stimulus with a reflex action which reveals nothing
that we should be justified in describing as an activity of the will.
The reaction follows with strictly automatic regularity upon the
stimulus, and nothing intervenes between the two which would permit the
conclusion that in the simple organism there is any faculty that could
delay, modify or change the reaction to the external stimulus.
Just as iron filings always respond to the attraction of a magnet in the
same way, just as certain combinations of mercury at the impact of a
blow flare up with an explosion, just as ice when warmed melts and
becomes water, and water when cooled to a definite point freezes into
ice, so do the simplest living things seek out certain rays in the
spectrum, certain temperatures, certain chemical conditions and avoid
others. Not only unicellular organisms do this, but also comparatively
highly developed animals, such as the daphniæ, for if light is sent
through a prism into a vessel containing water, these little creatures
collect at the violet end of the spectrum; such as the wood-lice, which
hate the light and creep into dark crevices; such as gnats, which are
attracted by the sun and dance in their hundreds in its rays. Moreover,
we meet with a similar phenomenon in man. We, too, in winter and spring
seek the sun and in summer the shade; in the cold season the warm stove
attracts us; bad smells put us to flight, sweet scents of flowers allure
us. The simplest automatic reflex actions are at the root of these
attractions and repulsions, exactly the same as with the daphniæ,
wood-lice and gnats. Only we are able to control and suppress these
reflex actions which the lower animals apparently cannot.
Anthropomorphic modes of thought easily mislead us into thinking that
the processes we observe in lower animals are due to an exercise of will
power. We draw near to the fire in winter because it is pleasant, but we
can quit it if duty calls us into the cold streets. One is apt to
imagine that the simple organisms also experience pleasant and
unpleasant feelings, that they try and avoid the latter, that the
daphnia seeks the violet rays because it likes them, that the wood-louse
flees the light because it dislikes it; in fact, that these creatures
possess a consciousness which becomes aware of and distinguishes between
pleasing and displeasing impressions, and that they possess a will which
responds to these impressions with suitable reactions. Very
distinguished scientists have been unable to resist the temptation to
assume in the lower animals, even in unicellular organisms, the
existence of processes with which we are familiar in the human
consciousness. William Roux introduces us to a "psychology of protista,"
and W. Kleinsorge goes so far as to maintain the existence of "cellular
ethics," and to devote himself to research into its laws. The work of
both these biologists is as fascinating as the most beautiful
fairy-tale, but it is probably the creation of a lively and fertile
imagination, just as the fairy story is.
More prosaic and less imaginative scientists do not see evidences of
psychology in the signs of life in the protista, or ethics in the
movements of a cell, but merely the effects of universal chemical and
physical laws which also control lifeless inorganic matter. To these
laws they trace the tropisms of simple organisms which tempt the
imagination, prone as it is to anthropomorphism, into errors; such
tropisms, that is to say, as their tendency to seek moderate warmth,
certain rays of light and weak alkaline solutions, or to avoid acids,
heat and ultra-violet rays. The little organisms probably do not obey
these impulses for reasons of pleasure or pain any more than the iron
filings obey the attraction of a magnet for such reasons. They do not
fly to it because it gives them pleasure; the little metal leaves of an
electroscope do not move apart because contact with each other
displeases them. All forms of tropism, chemicotropic, thermotropic,
phototropic manifestations, active and passive tropisms clearly show
that minute organisms involuntarily and unresistingly respond to the
influence of natural forces, just as if they were inanimate particles.
Microscopic investigations reveal many phenomena which one is tempted to
consider signs of life, but which cannot be such, as they occur in
connexion with inanimate matter. The Brownian movements are rhythmical
molecular changes of position, not due to any mechanical impulse
emanating from the surroundings, nor to a current in the fluid in which
the object of investigation is immersed, but arising from the object
itself, mostly very finely divided, tiny balls of mercury. A very small
drop of chloroform introduced into a fluid of different density behaves
exactly like a unicellular organism. It sends out pseudopods, wriggles
and draws them in again. The pseudopods seem to feel and examine
particles of matter with which they come in contact, and then either to
withdraw quickly from them or to surround and incorporate them in the
drop. This is deceptively similar to the behaviour of a living cell
absorbing food, though there can be no question of this in the case of
the drop of chloroform. In the latter it is merely a question of the
effects of surface tension, that is, of the normal behaviour of matter
in accordance with the laws governing the forces of nature, the
investigation of which lies in the domain of chemistry and physics.
Impartial thought comes to a conclusion about these phenomena different
from that derived from anthropomorphic delusions. It does not try to
smuggle dim, dark life into the collections of mercury molecules
apparently obeying some inner impulse, or into the seeking or feeling
about of a pseudopod of chloroform. On the contrary, it understands life
as the play of natural forces under the conditions supplied by a living
organism, as the automatic working of a machine-like apparatus to which
natural forces supply the motive power. Similar manifestations in
inanimate matter and in elementary organisms seem to justify the
conclusion that the distinction between living and non-living matter is
arbitrary, that there are only forces, or perhaps one single force, that
is to say, one movement, in the universe, whose activity is manifested
in the most manifold forms, of which life is one. Modern Monism has come
to this conclusion, but it is not alone in so doing. Long before Monism
there was a philosophy which conceived all cosmic energies to form a
unity; and really it is only an obstinate quarrel about words, for the
Hylozoists regard the universe as something living and ascribe life to
all matter and all atoms of which matter is made up, while the
Materialists regard life as a play of forces in matter. Fundamentally
the Hylozoists and Materialists hold the same views, only that the
former call force life and the latter call life force; just as the only
point of difference between them and the Pantheists is that these have
given the majestic title of God to the universal life they assume--as
Spinoza has it, "_Omnia quamvis diversis gradibus animata sunt_."
The question, what is life? is the greatest that the human understanding
can ask of itself. For thousands of years man has cudgelled his brain
over this, and is as far from finding an answer to-day as he was on the
first day. The definition most often repeated runs thus: Life is the
ability possessed by certain bodies to react to stimuli, to absorb
nourishment and to reproduce themselves. That is a statement of observed
facts, but it is no explanation. It informs us that we are familiar with
bodies which behave in a way distinguishing them from other bodies; but
why they conduct themselves differently from others, what the particular
thing is which is present in certain combinations of matter and absent
in others--that is an impenetrable secret.
Science has tried by the most varied methods to solve the problem. It
seemed a triumph of research that Woehler produced urea, that chemists
later on manufactured carbohydrates, that Fischer is on the high road to
the production of synthetic albumen. What is gained by these
discoveries? We bring about the same combinations as the living cell
does. That is, no doubt, an interesting achievement, but its value as an
addition to our knowledge on this point is infinitesimal. For we
accomplish the production of sugar, urea and amine in a manner very
different to that of the living cell, and he who copies the things
turned out in a workshop has contributed nothing to our knowledge of the
workman who plies his trade in the workshop. The dividing line between
life and lifelessness was supposed to have been obliterated when
elementary manifestations of life were proved to exist in inanimate
matter; the Brownian movements in the smallest particles; the growth of
crystals immersed in a solution of the same chemical composition as
themselves; crystallization itself which represents a kind of very
simple organization of matter, and at any rate proves the sway of a
regulating and directive force; the tendency of certain elements to
combine, which has been called their affinity. But this name is only a
poetical metaphor which no one will take literally. The growth of
crystals in their mother liquor is merely mechanical precipitation on
their surface, an external addition of layers of the same material; but
not growth by the incorporation of such matter, that is, through the
absorption of nourishment.
These and similar results of observation do not suffice absolutely to
justify the assumption, seductive though it be, that life is a
fundamental attribute of matter, that it is present everywhere though
graduated in intensity, that therefore apparently inanimate matter
differs not qualitatively, but only quantitatively from living beings,
that life stretches in an unbroken line from the block of metal or rock,
in which it is completely obscured, to man, the most highly developed
organism we know of; and that at a certain point in its range it reveals
itself in a form which permits no distinction between organic and
inorganic matter.
The origin of life is as completely unknown to us as its essence. For
thousands of years the assumption was lightheartedly made that under
certain, somewhat vague circumstances, life originated of its own
accord. Pasteur showed that a _generatio spontanea_ cannot be proved to
exist, that every living thing comes from another living thing, a parent
organism, and that the old philosophers were right in propounding
"_omne vivum ex ovo_" as a law, although they only guessed it and had
not proved it experimentally. A very few critics, who are hard to
convince, still dare to assert in a small voice that Pasteur's work and
all the facts established by microbiology do not prove conclusively that
life does not nevertheless originate from inorganic matter under
conditions which we cannot nowadays reproduce in our laboratories. No
answer can be made to this objection. An experiment is only conclusive
for the conditions in which it is made, and not for others. All that we
can positively assert is that on earth the genesis of life without a
demonstrable parent organism has never been observed. To go farther, and
to assert that a _generatio spontanea_ is absolutely impossible under
any conditions, on earth or elsewhere, is arbitrary, just as it is to
assert the contrary.
Those who are supporters of the theory that life can be developed from
non-living matter for a long time thought they had conclusively proved
their case; they argued as follows: At the present time life exists on
our planet; according to the Kant-Laplace hypothesis our planet was
formed from a cosmic nebula and passed through a state of fluid
incandescence; in this state life is impossible; therefore life must
have originated spontaneously one day after the Earth had cooled down;
consequently either the Kant-Laplace hypothesis is wrong or the
assertion that life can only be generated by life is erroneous; the two
assumptions are incompatible. This conclusion no longer presents any
insuperable difficulties. It has been observed that spores which have
been kept for months at the temperature of frozen hydrogen, that is,
very nearly at absolute zero, have retained their germinative power and
have developed when they were brought back to a favourable temperature.
Therefore they would not be killed by the cold of interstellar space on
their way from one heavenly body to another, and could become the seeds
of life on another hitherto inanimate star. That large numbers of tiny
particles of matter exist in interstellar space and are precipitated on
the heavenly bodies is proved by the cosmic dust that arctic explorers
have collected from the surface of snow and ice. Therefore the Earth may
well have been in an incandescent state, and may yet have received from
interstellar space the germs of life which developed and multiplied when
the Earth's crust had cooled sufficiently to provide the conditions
favourable to their existence; and these germs may have been the
ancestors of all the life that exists on earth to-day after a period of
evolution lasting hundreds of millions of years.
This would account for the origin of life upon the Earth, but not of
life in general. The germs, which travel as carriers of life from an
older heavenly body to a younger one, must have sprung from parents, and
however far back we trace their genealogical tree we are always finally
faced by this dilemma: either life did, after all, originate at one time
from something lifeless, and what has happened once must be able to
happen again, now and always; or life never originated at all, but has
always existed; it is eternal like matter, in forms whose variety we
cannot even dimly grasp, its threads, having neither beginning nor end,
wind through eternity. Of these two assumptions the latter is
incomparably more in harmony with our present-day views on the universe.
We believe the matter of which the universe is built up to be
everlasting. It costs no great effort to believe life to be eternal too.
True, the idea of eternity is inconceivable to us; it is a dim
conception which has given rise to a word, a tone picture which portrays
something indefinite, but within the bounds of the inconceivable there
is room for both semi-obscurities, the everlastingness of matter and the
everlastingness of life.
But the most enigmatical point in the riddle of life is not life itself,
which is a form of being, and is neither more nor less comprehensible
than the existence of an inanimate object, of a stone, of water, of the
air; it is consciousness. Descartes proves his own existence to himself
by the fact that he thinks. Life must be accompanied by consciousness in
order to convince the living being that it exists. The formula: "_cogito
ergo sum_" has been admired for hundreds of years. It certainly is
specious. But how many questions it leaves unanswered! Has it the right
to deny life to an entity that does not conceive itself? Must it not be
completed by the proof that life without thought, that is, without
consciousness, does not exist, that consciousness is the necessary
complement of life? And, above all, ought not Descartes to have given us
an explanation of what thought and consciousness are?
I will attempt to answer the questions left unanswered by Descartes. But
I must premise one thing. Every definition of consciousness implies a
postulate: life. Though at a pinch we can picture life without
consciousness, consciousness without life is absolutely inconceivable. I
do not undertake to explain what life is, any more than I attempted it
above. We must take it as something given. Consciousness, then, is the
subjective realization of something objective, the inward realization of
something outside. If in a living being a picture of its surroundings is
developed, then it absorbs something which is not a necessary part of
itself. Of course, this inner image must not be understood to imply an
absorption of matter. It is a process in the matter of which the living
being is built up. But, all the same, the image of the outer world in
the inner being does signify a penetration of the latter by the former.
This image, which follows the changes of the outer world and repeats
them in the inner being, is consciousness. It may be shadowy and
blurred, or clear and distinct; it may in rapid succession be formed and
pass away, and it can be preserved as a memory; it may reflect a greater
or a lesser portion of the outer world; consciousness is accordingly
duller or sharper; its contents are scant or plentiful, it retains the
images of a shorter or longer series of conditions in the surrounding
world. Between nutrition, which is recognized as an essential phenomenon
of life, and consciousness a surprising parallelism subsists. Both
consist in an absorption of the outer world by the organism; nutrition
is the assimilation of matter, consciousness that of stimuli. In the
process of nutrition the organism digests small quantities of the
outside world; in consciousness it digests the world as a whole.
This parallelism is no mere play of the intellect. If it is followed out
it leads to significant ideas if not to actual knowledge. What
penetrates from the outer world into the inner being of the organism is
vibration, movement, force. Is the matter which is absorbed as
nourishment ultimately anything different? Here we come up against the
ultimate problems of physics, the various hypotheses regarding the
nature of force and matter, the theories that in addition to matter
there is an ether, or that the ether is a different, more subtle, form
of matter, or that neither matter nor ether exist, but atoms out of
which everything is built up, which themselves consist of electrons
which are centres of force, motions without material consistency. All
these theories, of which the last cannot be grasped by the human
understanding, we can leave severely alone. This is not the place to
investigate them. But the attitude of the living organism towards the
outer world from which it absorbs nourishment and impressions,
converting them into power to drive the life machine and transmuting
them into consciousness, lends peculiar support to the supposition that
force and matter are not only inseparable but identical, that in them we
must seek a principle, or perhaps regard them themselves as a principle,
which must be of the same nature as consciousness, for otherwise it
could not be transmuted into the latter.
The senses are the means by which the outer world penetrates as an image
into the inner being. Before the senses are differentiated the living
organism possesses a general sensitiveness; that is to say, that under
the influence of the outer world its cell protoplasm undergoes a process
of regrouping, resulting in chemical and dynamic changes. The chemical
results of stimulus are anabolism and katabolism, a building up and
breaking down of the cell content; the dynamic results are movements
which in the lowest forms of life are purely mechanical, but in the
higher forms adapt the organism to the external influence in so far as
they place it either so as to be affected by the latter as long and as
powerfully as possible, or else so as to evade it. The living organism
can experience no stimulus and respond to it without absorbing and
transmuting it, converting it into a chemical process or a movement.
This inner process is a subjective realization of something objective, a
penetration by the outer world, therefore an elementary consciousness.
In proportion as the general sensitiveness becomes differentiated into
specific ones, as the image of the outer world filters through the
different coloured glass panes of the various senses into the inner
being of the organism, this image becomes multicoloured and varied.
It lies in the nature of this mechanism that the subjective image is not
identical with the objective original, but is modified and even
distorted by the panes through which it penetrates to the inner being of
the organism. What the subject perceives is never anything but a symbol
of the object, never the object itself; but this symbol suffices to
enable the consciousness to form an idea of the object, just as letters
enable the reader to take in words and thoughts. We must conceive the
development of consciousness to go hand in hand with that of the senses.
The more windows the organism can open to the outer world the more
easily and the more clearly does its image penetrate. The number of
objects which the subject can take in is the measure of the perfection
of its consciousness. The protista, lacking specific sense organs and
possessing only the general sensitiveness of protoplasm, can form only
to a very limited extent and with very little variety an inner
realization of the stimuli of the outer world. Its consciousness is
necessarily very restricted and exceedingly dim. Consciousness is
enlarged and grows clearer as the organism develops and its general
sensitiveness is differentiated into specific senses, until we reach the
level of man whose consciousness embraces far more of the outer world
than does that of any other living creature; because, lacking new
senses, he has succeeded in amplifying and enlarging those he possesses,
and has by artificial means made himself capable of perceiving stimuli
to which he is not directly susceptible and which therefore would have
remained unknown to him; to a certain extent he has translated them into
a form which his senses can perceive.
I do not overlook any of the difficulties which my attempt to explain
consciousness leaves untouched. On all sides the most urgent and
disquieting questions arise. Above all, the fundamental question, the
most enigmatic of all: how is an external stimulus, that is a movement,
a vibration, converted into a sensation, a perception? Further: must we
in the consciousness distinguish between the frame and its contents,
the conceptual mechanism and the concept? Or do the two coincide? Is
there no consciousness without a conceptual content? And is it the
movement entering into the organism, the inner realization of the outer
world which, transmuting itself in an incomprehensible manner into a
concept, creates consciousness, becomes consciousness? Is the
consciousness of the man standing upon the highest plane of
intellectuality the greatest consciousness possible? Does there exist
anywhere in the universe a more abundant, perhaps an infinitely more
abundant consciousness than that of human beings on the Earth, and will
the latter ever rise to this height? It is obvious that a development is
in progress. There was a time when the most comprehensive, the clearest
consciousness on earth was that of the trilobite or the cephalopod.
Evolution has gone as far as man. Does it stop at that or will it
continue?
According to Herbert Spencer evolution is progress from the simple to
the complicated. Let us accept this definition. Have we the right to set
up a scale of values and place the complicated above the simple? Is the
latter not the more perfect because it has more power of resistance,
greater durability, and can hold its own triumphantly against all
destructive influences? Is not evolution, then, a retrogression from the
perfect, because simple, to the more complicated, and therefore more
fragile, more easily upset and less capable of resistance to harm? Is it
not sheer egocentrism if we appraise the value of living beings
according to their greater or less resemblance to ourselves, and judge
them to be less or more worthy in proportion to their disparity with us?
Are the fish which, living in the sea wherein we cannot exist, can
inhabit the greater part of the globe, are wild duck which fly, swim and
walk, not more perfect than we, who have had to conquer the air and the
water by artificial means? Is not the mouse's hearing sharper than ours?
The eagle's sight keener? The dog's scent incomparably more delicate?
Has not the carrier pigeon an infinitely better sense of locality than
we have? Are not many beasts physically stronger, more nimble and agile
than man? His only claim to superiority rests on the greater perfection
of his consciousness. Why do not all living creatures participate
equally in the evolution to which this superiority is due? Why does it
not take place in every organism and lead the unicellular living being
in an unbroken ascent to the level of Goethe or Napoleon, or to a still
more lofty one, if such an one exist anywhere in the universe?
If one could believe in a Ruling Power and the plan of the universe as
its work, would it not be terribly cruel and revoltingly unjust that
this power, instead of treating all living beings alike, should make a
kind of selection of grace and lead some up to a higher level while it
condemned others to lasting lowliness, and that it should ordain that on
the road from the unicellular organism to man, countless connecting
links should be left hopelessly behind and not be permitted to continue
their ascent? Or must we admit the humiliating conclusion that a greater
amount of consciousness does not necessarily imply higher rank and
greater dignity, and that a protista, with its almost unimaginably pale
and narrow consciousness, can have just as great a feeling of well-being
as man with his immeasurably superior intellectual life; that therefore
the protista suffers no wrong if it never gets beyond its present stage
of evolution; and finally that the amount of the outer world which man
can absorb in his consciousness is as far removed from the entirety of
the universe as the contents of the protista's consciousness are from
that of the human mind? No answer can be found to these questions.
Whatever purports to be an answer, be it introduced as theology or as
philosophy, is visionary or nonsensical. We must resign ourselves to
moving in a very small circle moderately illuminated by Reason, while
all around, if we seek to penetrate beyond it, we perceive gruesome
darkness.
Evolution, that is a progress from the comparatively simple to the more
complicated, is a striking fact--I say comparatively simple advisedly,
for even in the unicellular organism the processes are far removed from
the absolutely simple. We do not know from what part of the organism the
impulse to evolution comes. Here we meet with the same mystery which
shrouds growth, its duration, its measure and its bounds. As the
conception is lacking, a word has been found, viz., entelechy, which
Driesch introduced into biology, the co-operation of all parts of the
organism for the purpose not only of preserving it but also of making it
more efficient in the matter of self-preservation and more perfect. A
critical investigation of entelechy would involve the broaching of the
whole question of life. It does not come within the scope of this work.
I shall therefore content myself with a very few remarks. Entelechy
works as if it were reasonable and acted with a set purpose. If you
think it out exhaustively it forces you to the assumption that life is
an intellectual principle, even in the protoplasm of the cell, long
before there is any perceptible trace of consciousness; that this
intellectual principle makes use of matter, builds it up, organizes it,
moulds it into material and tools for construction, and sets up a
mechanism in which and by which it develops itself. As far as we can see
the purpose of life is life itself. Entelechy directs all the work of
the organism in such a way that it becomes more and more capable of
self-preservation, that its efficiency becomes greater, that it can
absorb more of the outer world and can react more vigorously upon the
outer world. In other words, life strives continuously to make its
embodiments more permanent, securer, richer and more manifold.
However, if we do not know how the impulse to evolution originates, we
can at least form an idea of the mechanism of evolution. Fundamentally
life consists in the absorption of cosmic movements or vibrations, and
their transformation into another form of movement. The living cell is a
machine which makes use of cosmic energy for physio-chemical work.
Metabolism, warmth, electric manifestations, movement, and as their
concomitant a graduated consciousness, are the result of this work which
is carried out by cosmic energy in the cell power machine.
To start with, this machine works in the very simplest fashion. It uses
up its motive power as fast as it acquires it. Energy flows in and
immediately flows out again in another form. The organism is like a pipe
or a vessel without a bottom, so that its contents cannot be stored. The
lower organisms which obey tropisms are such bottomless vessels. They
are continually and inevitably subjected to the same attractions and
repulsions and have no means to withstand them. But at a certain stage
of evolution--how? why? Driesch replies: Entelechy!--a new part is
developed in the machine, something like the cam on a cogwheel which
forces it to come to rest. Or, to keep to the earlier simile, the
bottomless vessel acquires a bottom with a tap that can be opened and
closed. With this arrangement the organism is able to store the energy
it has received and then to make use of it according to its needs, to do
much more or much less work with it, to achieve much greater or much
smaller effects, than it would be capable of doing with the amount of
energy it receives from outside in a given unit of time. It is obvious
how much more efficient the organism becomes if it can store up energy
and can adapt to its needs the amount used up. This new part of the
machine is Inhibition.
It appears early, and takes part in the general development of the
organism; it is indeed the strongest factor in this development. Before
Inhibition intervenes the organism has only one response to stimulus:
reflex action. This is of the character of an electric discharge. It may
be stronger or weaker, but is uniform in kind. It varies quantitatively
but not qualitatively. In the lower organisms it is a contraction of the
cell protoplasm, a movement. In the higher organisms, in which the life
processes are carried out on the principle of the division of labour and
which have developed various organs for this purpose, each organ
performs the action of its specific function; the muscle contracts, the
nerve sends out a nervous impulse, the gland forms a secretion, and so
on. All reflex actions have this in common, that they serve no other
purpose than that of relaxing tension in the organism. They do not imply
any co-ordinated effort to promote the comfort and the welfare of the
living being. They cannot fulfil any complicated task. They exhaust the
organism which, after a series of reflex actions, becomes insensitive to
stimuli and must rest for a time before it can react again.
Beginning from that stage of evolution where inhibition intervenes,
reflex action loses the character of an automatic response to impulse
and becomes disciplined. Inhibition tries to suppress reflex action. Its
success is more or less complete according to the sensitiveness and life
energy of the tissue receiving the stimulus and the degree to which the
mechanism of inhibition is developed. The organism retains its tension,
remains charged with energy, and is able to carry out work for definite
purposes. In place of anarchistic reflex action which occurs regardless
of the needs of the organism, we find economy of energy, co-ordination
of effort, movement directed to a profitable end. It is only inhibition
which can raise the organism from its state of passivity, its helpless
dependence upon tropism, to a being in which a will is beginning to
dawn and which by its will becomes self-determinative. Inhibition is a
function of the will; it is the will's tool. Even Plato dimly perceived
this, and he expresses it in the metaphorical language peculiar to
himself, when, in the "Republic," he compares a human being to a
creature made up of three animals: a hundred-headed sea-serpent which
must at one and the same time be fed and tamed, a blind lion, and a man
who tames the serpent by means of the lion. These three animals are
desire ([Greek: epithumia]), courage ([Greek: thumos]), and mind
([Greek: nous]). We say in biological language, reflex action,
inhibition, and will or volitional reason.
All the concepts that are referred to here: purpose, co-ordination,
inhibition and will, are every one of them dependent upon one
fundamental concept, consciousness. Without it they are unthinkable.
Schopenhauer's unconscious will is a word without meaning. I have
postulated consciousness as the inseparable concomitant of life. It is
probably the essence of life. In its lowest stage it is too dim, its
contents too meagre and blurred, properly to distinguish the organism in
which it dwells from the world around. In a higher state of development,
when it gradually grows clearer and begins to be filled with more
sharply defined ideas, it learns to keep its organism and the
surrounding world apart, and tries to make the attitude of the former to
the latter one of self-defence, self-preservation and self-development.
From this stage of development onward, concepts begin to connect and
group themselves in such a way that consciousness contains not only an
image of the immediate present, but also memories of the past and a
forecast of the future. The ability to prolong the present into the
future, to understand the actual as a cause of the effects that follow
and to foresee these effects, that is the starting point of logic and
reason. It is the necessary antecedent of the will, which would have no
meaning if it were not the effort to realize a conception of actions and
their consequences, previously worked out by consciousness. Will is a
function of consciousness which, in pursuance of the well-known
biological law, creates an instrument for its purposes, and this
instrument is inhibition. The higher an organism stands on the ladder of
evolution the more energetically and surely does inhibition work, the
nicer and the more masterly does its intervention in the original reflex
actions grow.
Thanks to the piling up of reserves of energy, which is a result of
inhibition, the organism can carry out its work of differentiation, can
develop organs and organic systems, and obtain the power to perform more
complicated functions; these render it ever more independent of the
outer world and enable it to affect the outer world to an increasing
extent. Inhibition plays an important part in differentiation. Its
apparatus becomes organized. The nerve centres from which the inhibition
proceeds form a ladder of which each rung is subordinate to the next.
The peripheral nerves are controlled by the nerve centres in the spinal
cord, these again by the centres in the medulla oblongata, and then in
succession by the cerebellum and the cerebrum, and finally by the
corticle. On the principle of least resistance, on which all life is
based, the highest centres of inhibition unburden themselves by granting
the lower ones a certain measure of independence. The reaction to the
most ordinary and frequent stimuli is controlled and organized in its
character and strength by the apparatus of inhibition, so that it ensues
automatically, and no active inhibition, that is, no conscious effort of
the will, is required. The simplest of these automatic reflex movements
take place below the level of consciousness.
Those organized complexes of movement, however, which we call instincts,
are carefully watched by the consciousness and subjected to severe check
if they appear to run counter to the supposed interest of the organism.
The hereditary complexes of movement constituting instinct are highly
organized and oppose inhibition, only yielding to it when it is stronger
than they are. This can be observed in animals which are capable of
taming and training. All the artificial actions and omissions that man
teaches them are triumphs of inhibition over automatism. Among human
beings it is only the elect who can vigorously suppress their instincts
by inhibition directed by Reason. The being that has attained the summit
of organic evolution on earth is man, in whom only the lower, vegetative
life processes are liable to the influence of tropism and primary reflex
actions, while all the higher and highest functions are the work of
Reason, which arms the will with inhibition and suppresses all impulses
and actions that hinder its purposes. It is characteristic of these
functions that they are first worked out as concepts by the
consciousness before they are realized as movements.
It was essential for Morality to find this whole organic structure ready
to its hand before it could become a factor in human life. This
structure had been developed and perfected by the organism for its own
purposes, for the defence and enrichment of its life, to ward off
painful and obtain pleasurable feelings. Morality took possession of it
and used it for its own ends, which do not at the first glance coincide
with the aims which the individual immediately perceives and imagines,
and may indeed be diametrically opposed to these, preventing pleasurable
emotions, causing him pain and even endangering his life.
But Morality, which is a creation of society, was only able to dominate
the individual and gain control of the organic apparatus of his vital
economy, because its purpose is directed towards the same goal as the
tendencies of the individual organism, prolonging them beyond the
individual's scope, aiming at his preservation, and thus coinciding with
his instinct for self-preservation.
Morality limits the individual's vainglory and subordinates him to the
community; it is the condition on which the community allows the
individual to participate in the mightier and more varied means of
protection and the enrichment of existence which it has to offer. But
apart from this somewhat remote advantage of Morality, there is another
immediate one for the individual: it consists in the continual exercise
and consequent strengthening of inhibition; therefore, as we have learnt
to see in inhibition the main factor in the development and
differentiation of all living creatures, it offers a means of raising
the individual to biological perfection. The faculty of inhibition,
being in a continual state of strong tension, makes automatic reflexes
subject to the will, makes blind impulses obedient to the somewhat less
blind reason, and helps man along the path of evolution from the status
of a creature of instinct to that of a thinking personality of strong
character, capable of judgment and foresight, a personality which does
not seek to attain the pleasurable emotions necessary to every living
creature by pandering to his senses and satisfying the appetites of the
flesh, but achieves them by gratification of a higher order, by the
triumph of the intellect over vegetative life, by strengthening the will
in relation to the stimuli of the outer world and the organs, by taking
pleasure in the fact that the will is content with its sway. These are
harsh but subtle pleasures which, when they continue to preponderate in
the consciousness, bring about that state of subjective happiness which
is in the highest degree beneficial to life.
Morality is an arrangement which has arisen from the needs of society;
that is to say, it is not innate, but is an artificial institution of
the race. However, it grafts itself upon the natural organs and
attributes of man, and thus, from being a sociological phenomenon, it
becomes a biological one. The idea that Morality is something absolute,
a cosmic force, and that it would still exist and be valid if there were
no human beings, and even if the earth had no existence, I have refuted
with scorn. We must hold fast to the fact that Morality is a law of
human conduct, that it is in force only among mankind, and that apart
from mankind it is unthinkable. As, however, it becomes a differentiated
function of the apparatus of inhibition, it participates in the general
processes of life and leads us to that point where, indeed, we face the
unnerving outlook upon the absolute and the question of eternity.
My arguments have led me to many phenomena that can be established and
interpreted as facts of experience, but the explanation of which lies
beyond the power of the human mind. We have examined the riddle of life,
and we have distinguished therein a number of inexplicable things: the
lack of a beginning, sensitiveness to stimuli, consciousness, the
transformation of vibrations into sensations and concepts, the will, and
inhibition. We are forced to the conclusion that the only discernible
aim of life's activities is the preservation of life, or, more shortly,
that life is its own aim and object. Morality, too, either openly or by
implication, sets itself the one clearly demonstrable task of ensuring
to the individual the preservation and security of his existence in a
higher sphere than that of individual vegetative life processes. Thereby
it fits into the scheme of existence, its mysteries and aims, and
becomes an integral part of the cycle of life which emerges from
eternity and returns to it.